Gillard winged but still flying

THE final parliamentary week has seen the Coalition repeatedly allege that the Prime Minister engaged in criminal activity when she was a lawyer in the 1990s. It's one of the most serious accusations that could be made.

It would be a show-stopper - if the federal political battle wasn't so feral most of the time. However, these days people aren't shocked by much that's said in Canberra. It's become like watching too much violence on TV. Even against that background, however, the criminality claim, coming from the most senior Coalition figures, including Tony Abbott, was extraordinary.

The latest episode in the AWU ''slush fund'' controversy was highly choreographed. It was riveting to watch the mutual sledging by the saga's ''villains'' - former union officials Ralph Blewitt and Bruce Wilson (Julia Gillard's former boyfriend), who were once mates but now are bitter enemies. Blewitt, living in Asia, had arrived home in a blaze of publicity to ask for indemnity.

Then in the newspapers on Thursday - the last day of sitting - came new documentation about Gillard's role, released by former Slater & Gordon partner Nick Styant-Browne.

The sharp end of this battle is over Gillard's behaviour as a Slater & Gordon lawyer advising on the set-up of the ''Australian Workers' Union Workplace Reform Association'' - the slush fund from which Wilson and Blewitt later siphoned huge amounts.

George Brandis - who will become attorney-general if there is an Abbott government - told the Senate on Wednesday that Gillard's involvement in the affair had been characterised by ''it would appear, several breaches of the criminal law''.

On Thursday the stakes were dramatically raised when Abbott lent his authority to the criminality allegation, claiming Gillard had misled the WA Corporate Affairs Commission, which ''would certainly be in breach of the law''.

Despite all the questions she addressed between Monday and Wednesday, Gillard had avoided being drawn on whether she had written to the WA commission arguing for the incorporation.

But she had to deal with this directly after Thursday's disclosure of an extract from the 1995 Slater & Gordon interrogation of her. In that interview she agreed the commission had written suggesting the association might be a trade union and therefore ineligible for incorporation. So, she further agreed, ''we had prepared a response submitted on Wilson's instructions to that authority suggesting that in fact it wasn't a trade union and arguing the case for its incorporation''.

Abbott immediately claimed Gillard had given ''false information'' to the commission. Manager of opposition business Christopher Pyne said Gillard's letter was about how the proposed association ''is not part of the trade union'' and declared she should resign.

Gillard quickly showed her style as a front-foot fighter. Before question time she issued a defiant statement through a spokesperson.

''So, the Prime Minister wrote to the WA Commissioner? So what? She did what lawyers do. … So, the Prime Minister can't remember writing one letter from 20 years ago. So what? And what does the transcript show? That the PM said the association wasn't a union. … It obviously wasn't.''

In Parliament, gambling that she could out-debate him, she moved to give Abbott 15 minutes to prove his criminality case. Abbott was aware of the danger of the moment. His case on the facts was weak. There was the risk of sounding bullying. With the misogyny nightmare in mind, he declared in his speech, ''This is not about gender, this is about character''. He inserted the qualification that her behaviour had been ''possibly'' unlawful, saying that at the very least her conduct had been ''unbecoming''.

Gillard retorted that Abbott had accused her of a crime based on a false Fairfax Media report of the document, and was now ''handcuffed'' to an allegation against her without evidence.

We don't have a letter that Gillard wrote - it reportedly has disappeared from the files. But, with that qualification, the latest bit of the Slater & Gordon transcript has not backed up the opposition's allegation that she broke the law. There was nothing false about saying the proposed entity would not be a trade union. It wasn't. It was a body set up by two unionists.

On the evidence we have, the opposition has over-reached in its claims of breaches of the law, and that is not to its credit. A lot might be a fair cop in politics, but there should also be some level of responsibility by politicians in talking about each other. If that is missing they diminish themselves and the offices they hold (or potentially hold).

This being said, Gillard should have dealt with the issue of the letter before Thursday's reports forced her to do so. If she could not remember sending it (and she says she has no copy of the Slater & Gordon transcript that contains the reference) she should have said so. It's obvious Gillard was guilty of poor legal practice in her dealings in the AWU affair. She failed to open a file; she did not consult others in Slater & Gordon; it was screamingly bad to be giving professional advice to someone with whom she had a personal relationship. She was mixing with dubious characters. She cut corners.

It is said by some who knew her in the mid-'90s that she was traumatised by these events. When the Wilson/Blewitt fraud was uncovered, her professional life was under threat and her personal world collapsed. She ended her relationship with Wilson.

Painful as it would be - for she is proud and often very private - perhaps a frank, more personal reflection on her feelings at the time, on her mistakes and misjudgments, might have helped her case. As it is, she finishes the parliamentary year with the AWU affair having taken a fair bit of skin off her, but her opponents have not been able to prove those events have disqualified her for the office she holds.